From: “Brenda Lange” Sub­ject: Blog, Sept. 21, 2013

FLEXIBILITY: WITHOUTIT, NOMISSIONARYCANSURVIVEFORLONG

The week flew by as we jumped from one job to another, as pri­or­i­ties changed rapidly.

1. Manuel and his 2 man team filled the 7 ton truck and left on Mon­day for 2 full days of food dis­tri­b­u­tions in Meluco county where we have 515 orphans in our pro­gram. The 64 Revia orphans and the 112 Ele­phant Vil­lage orphans live on the edge of the great Game Reserve, and no mat­ter how hard they try to defend their fields, the ele­phants and baboons play havoc with their crops. They receive enough har­vest to last a few months, but by Sep­tem­ber, they are hun­gry. As Manuel drove slowly with the heav­ily loaded truck on the rock based road that leads to our ware­house in Meluco town, 1 of the new tires exploded. I PTL that he was only going 10 miles an hour at the time, or it could have caused him to lose con­trol. A rock had wedged itself in the tread caus­ing the blow out. The tires were still like new, but a sharp piece of gran­ite can do heavy dam­age. (we carry 2 spares, so they were still good to go). The dis­tri­b­u­tions went with­out inci­dent, and YOURLOVEGIFTS pro­vided these 176 kids with new clothes as well as food for the next 2 months. They returned on Thurs­day with­out fur­ther problems.

2. RAISINGTEENAGERS is not an easy task. Here in Balama, if you break the rules, you get to dig “Mama Brenda” a new trash hole (6ft.X3 ft.X 6 ft. deep) (2 m.X1m.X2m. deep) You’d be sur­prised how 3 days of dig­ging dur­ing a boy’s “free time” (when not in school), can change a rebel­lious mind. Just the thought of hav­ing to do it a 2nd time keeps most of our won­der­ful teenage boys from future infrac­tions. This week one of the boys missed a manda­tory pro­gram and lied when we con­fronted him with it. So he was dig­ging away when he heard a noise in the next hole over. Seems our trash holes have become per­fect snake pits!

The holes are right next to a stand of heavy woods, home to our local wildlife (mon­gooses, fer­rets, rats, and snakes). The ADDER (Africa’s ver­sion of the rat­tlesnake) goes after a rat, as I’ve seen these lazy killers be quite active just after dusk. The rat runs up on the loose dirt mound next to the newly dug trash hole. The snake fol­lows, but once on top, his heavy body can’t get trac­tion in the freshly dug dirt to stop his slide, and PLOP, he ends up in the bot­tom of the 6ft deep pit and can’t get out. This has hap­pened twice this month, and we are happy to be rid of these silent killers (God didn’t give them a rat­tler). The ADDER is a lazy snake, and loves to sit in the sun next to a walk path, and wait for its prey to walk by. If that hap­pens to be a per­son, so be it, as these nasty guys have a tal­ent, the USA rat­tler doesn’t. THEYCANSTRIKEBEHINDTHEM and they give NOWARNING. Need­less to say, it gives the boys added incen­tive to DIGFAST, know­ing those guys are roam­ing the woods behind them. (not to worry, as the boys make so much noise dig­ging, every snake in the area avoids that area in daytime)

3. BABYREPORT: Great to be able to say this week that ALLBABIES in our For­mula Pro­gram are doing well. The mother of the twins, whom I rushed to the hos­pi­tal last week, WALKEDIN this week to weigh her lively twins. The mother was brought in by bicy­cle from Rovuma vil­lage, 5km (3 miles) out and was walk­ing slow, but steady after her trans­fu­sion last week for her life threat­en­ing ane­mia. BABYSARA from an area we call “Coconut Vil­lage” (100’s of coconut trees grow there), is also doing great, and gain­ing weight.

4. CONSTRUCTION: Our 3rd children’s com­plex is over 70% fin­ished. The children’s home is almost fin­ished and the men are 75% done with the fos­ter mother’s house. Then the slower fin­ish­ing work begins. We hope to have the chil­dren in this new home by November.

Con­struc­tion in progress for children’s com­plex #3.

5. A per­son “in the know” about what inspec­tors are look­ing for, just hap­pened to drop by today to check on the improve­ments we made since our last inspec­tion in late July. SURPRISED and IMPRESSED were both words he used to describe what he saw. He has a few minor rec­om­men­da­tions, but stated it looked like we were ready for the major inspec­tion. The inspec­tors were sup­posed to arrive this next week, but once again have delayed until Octo­ber. No prob­lem, as it gives me the time needed to TWEEK the few things he told us about. (The objec­tive for his visit today.) Our staff is most grate­ful to those who truly care about the kids, and who will “walk the extra mile” with us to make sure our orphans have secure futures.

6.AMBULANCEWORK If all this wasn’t enough, our dri­vers have been kept busy haul­ing the sick to the Balama and Mon­tepuez hos­pi­tals, as the Balama ambu­lance broke down this week. Capena, our office man­ager, spent 5 hours Thurs­day night deal­ing with a call that took him 30 km (15 miles) into the bush to fetch a woman with a breach birth. The baby was lost, but the mother was saved after Capena drove them late that night to Mon­tepuez’ Regional Hos­pi­tal which is the clos­est place for an emer­gency Cae­sarean Sec­tion. On Fri­day, our Dri­ver Manuel was kept busy doing 2 runs into the bush for the badly sick and an OB in trou­ble. He then took another OB in dis­tress to Mon­tepuez for an emer­gency C-section. Both of these men are excel­lent dri­vers and we PTL for the time they give to help save lives.

Now it is Sat­ur­day after­noon, and time to take a deep breath and RELAX. Tomor­row is another day wait­ing to sur­prise us. Never a dull moment with Jesus lead­ing the way.

Bless­ings to all of you for bless­ing us with your love and prayers. Bush Bunny Brenda and the Balama staff